Australia - Sydney

12 - 17 July '08

After a sleepless 9 hour flight from Bangkok, we arrived down under in Sydney. It was a crisp, cold morning signifying a temporary end to our t-shirts and suncream. Australia was really just a stopover for us to get to South America... we would be returning here early next year for the grand wedding of 2 very close friends when we would try and explore the island in more depth. Unaware, we had arrived in what would probably be the busiest period of the year, WYD - World Youth Day (should really be called Week). Over 150,000 pilgrims from all corners of the world had converged in Sydney city centre to attend talks, readings, festivals and above all to see the Pope over the next few days - it was a chaotic but atmospheric time to be here. Our first task was to find accomodation and thankfully Sydney airport was geared towards backpackers - there was a dedicated area with direct phonelines to all the major hostels... unfortunately because of WYD, all of these were already booked up so we settled for a slightly upmarket place near Darling Harbour. After some brief rest, we ventured out towards Darling Harbour itself where we stumbled across a Nando's... after 3 months of deprivation, we didn't hesitate in ordering half a chicken and peri-peri chips :-)
We spent the following morning strolling around Hyde Park and CBD before meeting up with the lovely Mithra (Siv's younger sister) at a harbour bar. Two carafes of Sangria later we found ourselves in a canteen-style food court in the heart of china-town (highly recommended and generous budget options with a variety of stalls). Alkesh, his fiance and their siblings were coincidentally also in Sydney at the time, and so we ended the night drinking and catching up with them.
The next day we lost ourselves in the dense greenery of the Royal Botanical Gardens whilst making our way to Mrs. Macquaries Point. This peninsula viewpoint was an ideal location to capture the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge in a single gaze. We lay on the grassy banks for a couple of hours and read before watching the sunset over the bridge. After making our way through the crowded grounds of the Opera House, we sat and listened to a small aboriginal open-air concert near Circular Quay (surprisingly, we also bumped into a couple of people from our Kanchanaburi trip here).
Although we had arrived in Australia's colder months, we arose to glorious blue skies the following morning and decided to head out to Manly Beach. We waded our way through congregations of dancing youth at the harbour who were waving their country's flag where we caught a ferry to Manly (a lot of the city roads had been cordened off and pedestrianised). We lunched at a waterfront cafe and spent the rest of the afternoon soaking in the sun whilst walking along the sandy beaches. On returning to Darling Harbour that evening, we wined and dined with our generous host Mithra at her favourite Malaysian restaurant - Malaya.
On our final day in Sydney we joined the masses of youth to watch The Dark Knight on its opening day and on the world's largest screen... we felt the film didn't quite live up to the original but our visual experience didn't disappoint. Our brief stay in Sydney had given us a taste of what the country could offer, but Sydney itself was similar to London in many respects and never took us out of our comfort zones (albeit our stopover was undoubtedly too short). We looked forward to our return visit early next year, but for different reasons. Next stop... Chile.